Oranges 🍊🍊🍊

You know by now that my favorite color is 'orange' but there's actually many different shades of orange like the picture above is my fancy vivid yellow orange diamond or aptly described as citrus orange which is my favoritw shade of orange. However orange diamonds are extremely rare & extremely expensive too especially those with vivid pure orange colors. So what I'm about to show you now are the next best alternatives to orange diamonds!

Fanta Orange Spessartine or Mandarin Garnet are pure tangerine orange specimens such as this one above is the most valuable highly prized spessartine garnet followed by yellowish orange such as the one below. Though I tend to prefer the yellowish orange varities bcoz many pure orange garnets looks darker & I like bright colors and the yellow overtone of the spessartine garnet below gives it a brighter appearance.

What's great about spessartine garnet is that it is singly refractive like diamonds so it is the closest to being an orange diamond alternative than some other orange jewels. Spinels, zircon, tourmaline, topaz among others can also produced orange gem specimens but their orange colors tend to be darker or more subdued than spessartine garnet or should I say their best specimens are no match to the best orange varieties of natural color diamonds, orange sapphires & spessartine garnets. Orangy red & orange red are also found in spessartine garnets but they are less rare & less valuable than predominantly orange ones such as red orange to reddish orange like the one in the video below & of course specially rarer are yellow orange, yellowish orange to pure orange. That's because when people are buying spessartine they are looking for orange varieties otherwise they might as well go for regular pyrope brownish red garnets & rhodolite purplish red garnets which are more common & can be cheap.

 

Unfortunately spessartine garnet also called spessartite are not durable enough to be worn for rings & I'm a ring person! At 6.5 to 7.5 on the 'Mohs Scale Of Hardness' they aren't durable enough to be set in rings & worn daily specially if you have active hands or the sporty type. They are safe when worn as pendants or earrings. As I previously mentioned there are several gem species that produces an orange color but so far I only like three. Spessartine is beautiful but not quite durable but it is cheaper than orange sapphires which is more durable than spessartine being 9 on the 'Mohs Scale Of Hardness' which is next to diamonds & silicon carbide in terms of hardness but orange sapphires are more rare & therefore more expensive. Orange sapphire are also doubly refractive like all corundum gem specie which it belongs to & it is not as diamond like compared to spessartine but in my opinion both spessartine and orange sapphires are equally beautiful & their difference is quite subtle only an expert can differentiate & the orange sapphires below is an example of how gorgeous they can be, making orange sapphires my favorite fancy colored sapphires & sapphires do come in almost all the shades of the rainbow & though I used to like blue, violet & purple, for now orange is my favorite & this video will tell you why.

 

Though orange sapphires is my favorite alternative to the extremely rare natural color orange diamond but an orange sapphire is still alot more expensive than spessartine and so I am most likely to buy spessartine. I do however already owned two fancy colored sapphires that is mounted on a two tone gold ring I designed. One is a pink sapphire while the other is a padparadscha red orange sapphire with a touch of pink which is more rare than orange sapphires per se but it isn't an orange sapphire even though it is predominantly orange despite looking like a orange red ruby. I know it sound confusing but that's gemology it is never easy always complicated & soon I'll blog about why gem color terminology doesn't always reflect on how they look.

UPDATE: Due to popular demand here are the other orange jewels to choose from...

My 4th favorite orange jewel is the orange topaz or imperial topaz like the one on this video above. 8 on the 'Mohs Scale Of Hardness' it is a very durable gem for everyday wear but the downside is it is very rare and uncommon & therefore more expensive than spessartine & can be more expensive than an orange sapphire even though when at its best it is a bit a shy away less beautiful than my top 3 favorite but still it is a highly prize collector's stone as imperial topaz colored varities of topaz are all noted to be rare & valuable to gem connoisseurs.

Probably the rarest orange jewels next to orange diamonds is the orange spinel. It is singly refractive like orange diamonds with a hardness of 8 on the 'Mohs Scale' orange spinels are durable enough to be worn on rings daily but their downside is the expensive price and their relatively less attractive color compared to the orange jewels above. 

My first favorite & probably the cheapest orange jewel because majority of all orange citrines if not all are treated. Naturally their colors are either a brown or a pale yellow or even colorless & then artificially heated to improve or enhance their color. I am definetely considering buying orange citrine as an alternative to orange diamond but since their color is artificial it is far from being a favorite & since their price difference from orange garnets aren't really far in between it is wiser to buy the orange garnet not only for beauty but for rarity as well & they both have about desame hardness.

Last and the least on my top 7 favorite orange jewels is the very rare orange tourmaline & like what I mentioned from the beginning orange tourmalines usually are either too subdued of an orange or lighter orange such as the loose orange tourmaline on the video above. Regardless orange tourmalines are very collectible due to their rarity. Anyways beauty is in the eye of the beholder so your choices could be different from mine but one thing is for sure that the best color of them all is the one that brings out the best in you! ~ Virgilio Elcullada Luib Jr.